Shin was very cold.
The whine of another snowmobile echoed from behind him. He accelerated to stay ahead. His mind raced, trying to find a way to get away, steal a car, and complete the mission. A compact plastic box containing three vials of the fluid pressed against his body. He had tucked them inside the chest pocket of his coveralls as he got out of the Explorer. The pistol in the pocket of his parka poked his abdomen, reminding him of its presence.
The ground sloped gradually downward. In the dark, Shin could not clearly make out what lay ahead of him. A black shadow stretched across the snow about two hundred yards ahead. Another mile or two of open field continued on the other side.
Was the shadow just a dip in the ground? Shin glanced quickly to the right and saw a big white trooper truck in the distance. It was on an almost parallel path to him. Then, just ahead of the truck, he saw a bridge and realized where he was.
Hurricane Gulch!
The shadow yawned open in front of his snowmobile, revealing steep rock walls that plummeted five hundred feet to the frozen river below. The far edge was too far to reach. There was no time to turn away. He desperately twisted the tracks of his snowmobile, but the edge was under him half a second later.
Shin leaped back from the machine with all the thrust of his legs, twisting toward the snowy ground behind him as the snowmobile went airborne. The scream of the powerful racing engine suddenly rose in pitch as it no longer struggled against the pressure of the snow. Clawing at the air, Lieutenant Shin fell through the empty frozen night.
Snow smashed into his face and he felt pressure on the front of his body. He opened his eyes and saw that he had hit solid ground. There was still a chance! A chance to survive! He slid down the snow-covered wall into the crevasse.
Shin dug into the snow with what strength he had left. He grasped for any hand hold as he slid further over the edge. A tearing sound came from below him, followed by a sudden, searing pain in his right leg, then the fall stopped.
He hung in a thicket of alder that jutted out from the side of the cliff in a knot of gnarled branches. One of the branches had torn through his Carhartts. It punctured the skin and muscle of his calf. The pain was incredible, but the tree had stopped his descent.
The pursuing snowmobile whined twenty feet above him as it came to stop. The engine turned off. A frozen silence descended like a void blanket on the area. Footsteps crunched in the snow, breaking the stillness. Someone called out from the direction of the road.
“Did he go over the edge?” said the distant male voice.
“I don’t know. I saw him jump as the machine went over.”
Shin found a foothold just below his trapped leg. Bracing his left leg to support his body weight, he pulled his right leg free of the alder limb. He stifled a scream as the fleshy wound tore against the rough texture of the wood. He struggled not to faint.
He stood still, waiting for the waves of pain to quiet, and judged his situation. The snowmobile had crashed to the bottom of Hurricane Gulch and exploded in flames. He was about twenty feet beneath the edge of the cliff. The moon and stars illuminated the chasm with pale light, and he that the ledge continued from where he stood toward the road.
The bridge he had seen from the top was not visible as the line of the valley curved gradually. That same curve was also enough to keep him out of sight from whoever may be on the road.
The sound of more footsteps approached from the road. Shin reached up with his hand and wiped the snow and frost from the opening of his parka hood. The light pressure from the action sent a screech of white pain across his face as the cloth of the hood touched the frostbitten skin around his eyes and nose.
Once he recovered from the pain, Shin moved slowly along the ledge until he was sure of his footing, and then he began to scoot sideways faster until he came in sight of the bridge.
More footsteps crunched across the snow above him and passed to where the snowmobile had gone over the edge. He heard a voice talk into a radio.
The whup-whup-whup of a helicopter rose in the distance. The thundering machine followed the highway up from the south, then turned as it approached Hurricane Gulch. Shin forced himself to run through the pain in his legs. He reached the safe covering of the bridge just as the helicopter’s spotlight burst onto the snow-covered ledge. Much to his relief, the light from the helicopter slid down to the valley floor to scan the wreckage of the snowmobile rather than the ledge over which he had just crossed. They were looking in the wrong area.
Shin crossed under the bridge and climbed the cold steel support beams that brought him to the surface beside the road. He peeked up from the darkness of his cover, keeping within the dark shadow cast by the headlights of several police vehicles pulled over to the shoulder or in a turnoff about fifty yards up the road.
An F250 with the trooper logo on the door stood on the highway across from him. A single trooper stood by the open passenger door, looking into the vehicle. Everyone else was on the other side of the vehicles, looking in the direction of the effort to find him.
Lieutenant
